Free Sidewinder by Jory Sherman Page A

rattling sound with his teeth.
    Wading Crow had been thinking. He was counting on his fingers. Brad watched him, wondered what he was figuring in that Arapaho brain of his.
    “Sidewinder,” Wading Crow said, “you bring ten cow. I give two ounces for cow.”
    “Two ounces of gold for each cow?” Brad said.
    Wading Crow nodded. “Ten cow. Twenty ounce. You bring. I make map to village.”
    Brad looked at Felicity, who seemed lost.
    “That’s more than we could get in Pueblo,” Brad said. “More than we could in Denver. Even if we drove them to the railhead in Kansas, we probably wouldn’t get that much.”
    “How much is it in greenbacks?” she asked.
    “Thirty-two dollars a head, Felicity. Three hundred and twenty dollars for ten cows.”
    She let out a low whistle.
    “I could buy you that dress you wanted in Oro City,” he said. “The one at Cotter’s store.”
    “Oh, Brad. That was just a-wishin’.”
    “Well, wishes do come true sometimes, you know.”
    He looked at Wading Crow.
    “When do you want the cattle?”
    “Seven sleeps.”
    “That’s a week, darlin’.”
    “I make good map,” Wading Crow said. “You come. Do Snake Dance.”
    “Whoa,” Brad said. “I’m not . . .”
    “What’s he talking about, Brad? Dance with snakes?”
    “Never mind, honey. He’s just joking.”
    “No joke,” Gray Owl said. “Sidewinder make good Snake Dance. Bring good luck.”
    “Wading Crow, I’ll bring the cattle to you in a week, but I want no part of your Snake Dance. If that particular string is attached, I won’t bring the cattle.”
    “You bring. I pay.”
    “But no Snake Dance. Right?”
    Wading Crow smiled. He waved a hand in the air as if to dismiss the very idea of a Snake Dance.
    Brad wasn’t so sure.
    “Don’t you go anywhere near those snakes, Brad,” Felicity said.
    Julio looked sick. As if he had been kicked in the stomach.
    The snakes had stopped rattling.
    But Julio could still hear them, and the two Indians made him nervous. He told himself he would stay awake all night, just in case. With one hand on his pistol. The other on his rifle.
    “Good,” Gray Owl said, finishing up his small clay pipe. It was pink, made from pipestone, traded long years before from a Southern Cheyenne. It was a good pipe. “Make sleep now. Much rain all night.”
    Felicity wrapped her arms around Brad’s arms and yawned.
    “I am tired,” she said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
    “Yeah.” He was still thinking about the Snake Dance and the cattle and the gold. They could use the money. From what Wading Crow said, it would be a fairly long trip. Three or four days if they didn’t have to climb any big mountains.
    He would work all that out with Wading Crow in the morning, he thought. He helped Felicity make up their bed. They pulled the buffalo robe over them.
    Gray Owl added more wood to the fire and spoke to Julio.
    “You sleep,” he said. “No worry.”
    Julio’s eyes widened.
    Did the Indian read his thoughts? Gray Owl showed him a place to sleep on a deerskin he had unrolled.
    Julio could not refuse. He dared not refuse.
    He still didn’t trust either Gray Owl or Wading Crow, but he had much tiredness and his eyelids were as heavy as lead sash weights. He lay down on the skin, but he didn’t carry his rifle over to the bed. He took his pistol belt off and loosened the pistol in its holster. He kept one hand on the butt as he closed his eyes.
    Brad took one last look at the smoke hole. There were no stars, no moon. Only blackness and the silvery streaks of rain flashing past the opening.
    Almost as good as stars, he thought, as Felicity draped an arm over his chest and snuggled close to him. The smell of her hair and the silkiness of it was the last thing he remembered that night.

TWELVE

    Two hours before dawn, the patter of rain diminished to whispers by the time the eastern horizon cracked open a rent in the sky. There was only a mist in the high trees, a thin blanket of fog in